Michael Wolff Talks ‘Siege,’ Trump, Journalism and His Definition of Truth

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/30/business/media/michael-wolff-book-siege.html

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“Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House,” Michael Wolff’s account of President Trump’s early tenure, sold more than four million copies, spawned a TV deal, prompted the president to threaten legal action and led to the ouster of Stephen K. Bannon from the White House and Breitbart News.

On Tuesday, Mr. Wolff returns with a sequel, “Siege: Trump Under Fire.” Author and subject seem well-matched: A pair of acid-tongued gossipmongers fixated on the foibles of New York’s elite, Mr. Wolff and Mr. Trump are gifted storytellers who are unafraid to punch back.

But the similarities extend in less flattering ways. “Fire and Fury,” which portrayed a president with a strained relationship to the truth, raised questions about Mr. Wolff’s own adherence to the facts. Minor errors cropped up; anecdotes were denied. On “Saturday Night Live,” Fred Armisen, in Mr. Wolff’s thick glasses and bald pate, dismissed questions about the book’s accuracy.

“Look, you read it, right?” Armisen-as-Wolff said. “You liked it? You had fun? Well, what’s the problem?”

The new book’s claims range from the intriguing — Mr. Wolff writes that Alan Dershowitz asked for a million-dollar retainer to defend Mr. Trump, a claim Mr. Dershowitz said on Wednesday was “completely, categorically false”— to the lurid, including a description based on a secondhand source of a supposed encounter between Mr. Trump and an unnamed woman aboard his private jet before his presidency.

In an interview at his Manhattan townhouse on Tuesday — his first public comments about “Siege” — Mr. Wolff, 65, praised his reporting, defended his reliance on Mr. Bannon as a source and explained why he had little use for the usual fact-checking procedures valued by reporters at mainstream news outlets.

He was trending on Twitter at the time of the interview. A spokesman for the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, had issued a rare statement denying a central claim of “Siege,” which had just leaked out: that Mr. Mueller’s team had drafted an indictment of Mr. Trump on obstruction charges that was never used. Edited and condensed excerpts from the conversation with Mr. Wolff follow.

I’m surprised you’re not fielding calls from your lawyer.

I fielded.

The special counsel denied that the documents you describe in “Siege” exist. Do you want to respond?

I would only say my source is impeccable, and I have no doubt about the authenticity and the significance of the documents.

How did you find all these sources? After “Fire and Fury,” weren’t you persona non grata in the West Wing?

Everybody continued to talk to me. When “Fire and Fury” came out, I thought Steve Bannon would certainly never speak to me again, and the truth is, he never stopped speaking. But the other element of this is — I think a key one — is I’m a New York guy. Donald Trump is a New York guy. In the end, we know a lot of the same people. There is this conversation among these people about Donald Trump. And I am fortunate to be in that loop.

You wrote “Fire and Fury” with physical access to the White House. Did you have that this time?

I have not been in the White House for this book, no. But a very large percentage of the people who spoke to me for the first book have continued to speak to me for the second book. Partly because they can’t stop talking about Donald Trump, and I’m a good listener. But also because I think the portrait in the first book worked for them.

Did you seek an interview with the president?

No.

Why not?

He tried to stop the publication last time. I think that would be a fool’s errand, to invite the president of the United States to come down on you.

Arguably, Trump’s anger was an accelerant for the sales of the book.

As it turned out. But at that moment, it didn’t feel like that was what it was going to be.

You felt concerned?

Yeah! If the president of the United States comes after you, you feel concerned.

In your author’s note, you write that “Siege” captures “an emotional state rather than a political state” of the presidency.

I’ve said many times: I’m not a Washington reporter. And Washington reporters, they do a great job. They do their job. I approached this as, that the more significant factor here, beyond policy, was buffoonery, psychopathology, random and ad hominem cruelties. In a way, my thesis is that this administration, this character, needed a different kind of writer.

Is there an argument you wanted to make in “Siege”?

The argument is, this was a wholly different kind of president, a wholly different kind of administration. And even beyond that, you have this figure that is strangely isolated. It’s really just Donald Trump. There really isn’t a government functioning here. I think the historical understanding is that the presidency changes the person who holds the office. I think the reverse is true here — he’s changed the White House into the Trump Organization.

Steve Bannon no longer works in the White House and has been cast out from Trump’s inner circle. How much should we trust in what Bannon has to say?

I’ve been sorting this now for actually close to three years, so I think I have a fairly good sense of the reality quotient at any given point. But then I think you have to look to Bannon’s insights. When he says something, in my experience, he can often get right to the kernel, into the hub of the situation, where you say, ‘Damn, of course that’s it.’ Among the hundreds of people I have spoken to, he is the most insightful person about Donald Trump, about what makes him tick.

How many sources did you talk to for “Siege”?

150 people.

Critics of “Fire & Fury” said you were fast and loose with facts.

I think every successive account has only confirmed what was in “Fire and Fury.” And often months, or years, later.

What did you make of Fred Armisen’s impression of you?

When you get portrayed on “Saturday Night Live,” you take it any way you can get it.

In some ways, that caricature captured the central skepticism around your book.

I would push back against that. Literally every book, every account since has either repeated “Fire and Fury” in many of its specifics, or confirmed virtually everything that I wrote about in that book.

Do you think you’ll get flak from other journalists for “Siege”?

I assume so.

In “Siege,” you quote a witness — a former sound engineer on “The Apprentice” named Erik Whitestone — who describes episodes of what could be construed as sexual misconduct by Trump before his taking office. Did you seek a response from Trump?

I did not. As I say, I didn’t contact Donald Trump at all. But why would you? Literally, this is not a man who is going to suddenly at this point of his life ’fess up to being a sexual harasser.

Were you able to speak with the women involved?

No. I’m just reporting this person’s account of his life with Donald Trump.

Whitestone struck you as credible?

Wholly.

You also write that Fox News provided questions ahead of time for its interview with Brett Kavanaugh during his Supreme Court nomination fight. Did you ask Fox for comment?

No, but, again — it’s a difference between an institutional reporter and a non-institutional reporter. I don’t have to ask the silly questions.

Are they silly if it’s a matter of fact in the book?

Yes, because can you imagine a circumstance under the sun in which Fox would come clean on that?

[Contacted on Wednesday, Fox News called Mr. Wolff’s claim “pure fiction.”]

But “Siege” went through a fact-checking period?

Of course.

And that did not include reaching out to —

I actually don’t believe, if you know the answer, it is necessary to go through the motions of getting an answer that you are absolutely certain of.

Just to be clear, by “answer,” you mean the response you would hear from the subject?

Yes.

I guess I’d press you again on fact-checking.

It’s a distinction between journalists who are institutionally wedded and those who are not. I’m not. You make those pro forma calls to protect yourself, to protect the institution. It’s what the institution demands. I’m talking about those calls where you absolutely know what the response is going to be. They put you in the position in which you’re potentially having to negotiate what you know. In some curious way, that’s what much journalism is about. It’s about a negotiated truth.

For someone else, a book writer, I don’t have to do that. When I know something is true, I don’t have to go back and establish some kind of middle ground with whoever I’m writing about, which will allow me at some point to go back to them.

As a journalist, is there a responsibility to seek out the subject’s side of the story? To gather as much information as you can?

As a journalist — or as a writer — my obligation is to come as close to the truth as I possibly can. And that’s not as close to someone else’s truth, but the truth as I see it. Remember, it’s a difference between a book and something else — you don’t have to read my book, you don’t have to agree with my book. But at the end of the day, what you are going to know is that it is my book. It is my vision. It is my report on my experience. It’s not put together by a committee. What you do is a committee project at some point. What I do is not. And I’m not saying one is better than the other, they’re just different functions.

Is “Siege” a work of journalism?

Of course.